Josep Miàs (Banyoles, 1966) is a sculptor best known as a creative architect who has brought Catalan architecture of excellence and innovation to the highest international level, who also cultivates building, urban planning, landscaping, interior design and sculpture.
The commitment to the place and its narratives, the constant dialogue between space and context, the ability to harmonize materials and the creation of an emotional and singular architecture are some of the elements that characterize him. His projects seek to create a space with a specific atmosphere that leads to a specific and unique experience, understanding architecture as walkable sculptures. Because architecture is still a way of making art! In fact, many architects have established close ties between art and architecture with creative and innovative contributions. This is the case of Miàs, which is expressed in the context of the mixture of languages and supports of eclectic cohabitation that has imposed itself in recent years. His aerial volumes - which refer us to models of buildings - create a diffuse border between architecture and sculpture to play with our perception. They are three-dimensionally drawn lines that expand spatially to create objects -materialized with wire- that fold and refold into networks. Realized or dreamed, these linear strokes, in constructive order, bring us closer to drawing; a fundamental tool in the architect's work. In these objects in transit, the matter is so brief that it does not allow anything to be hidden; it manifests itself naked, showing its anatomy, without any type of clothing that conceals its structure. In the scope of his introspective laboratory, they are the materialization of thought, where time is sought to glimpse courses and investigations, as well as to exercise one's own idea. The truth of the line comes from a work of analysis of visible reality, ending in a three-dimensional transcription that is at the same time the synthesis of volume, its contour, and the effects of light.
In its essence, drawing is the voice of the line (as the stain is of painting, the volume of sculpture and space is of architecture) and for this reason its substance is delicate, intangible, ethereal, almost immaterial. As a language of artistic expression, drawing constitutes the irreplaceable basis of the most extraordinary moment of the artist's work: the creative act. It is a privileged means of direct affirmation, of constant experimentation; a writing of great ductility that allows the author a freedom of action difficult to achieve with other artistic processes. This is possible because the mind and the hand communicate directly through a fluid psycho-somatic energy, reflecting without intermediaries, the movements and emotional flows in linear strokes on the paper. Drawing is ultimately thinking, defining, volumetricizing, concretizing ideas and forms, configuring an element of the intellect or reality, that is, using a visual procedure linked to the perceptive capacities of the mind.
So much so that in 2021 the National Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Centre in Paris showed the most important drawings and models of the projects carried out by his architectural studio in the exhibition “MIAS Exhibition” that have become part of its permanent collection. Unpredictable, innovative and experimental proposals that have been recognized with the Honorary Fellow 2024, awarded by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). This is a highly prestigious honorary distinction, which has previously been awarded to Catalan architects such as Oriol Bohigas, Ricardo Bofill and RCR Arquitectes and which adds to a series of international recognitions received throughout his professional career. Some of his most outstanding works are the Fontanals Golf Club, the remodeling of the Historic Centre of Banyoles, the new Barceloneta Market, the 22@ Plug-in Building and the iGuzzini Illuminazione HQ in Barcelona, among others. In addition, in 2021 the Barcelona Design Museum dedicated a monographic exhibition to him.
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